And so it begins

Depending on the time of day and the direction the wind blows, this site is now 4th or 5th on Google if you search for perception is truth, and second if you search for “perception is truth”. Google is fickle so those positions will change over time naturally. Obviously, individual posts that are slowly showing up on Google have different page ranks and show up in different locations. But the spam comments have finally begun.

This is both good and bad, it means the site can now be found on Google, maybe even by people1 and of course it means that robots and automated spamination machines can find it and start posting comments.

So far, Akismet (the default spam plugin for WordPress) has spotted the 14 spam comments and I haven’t been forced to deal with them. I was amused to find which posts they latched onto. The last 11 comments were all attached to the post I made about recipe books. They all link to a single cookery website (according to the URL, I never visited to check). Two insurance links on my post about Bacon Cobs (!), and so far a lone single mortgage spam (geddit, lone? loan?) on my post about being in positive equity.

As long as Akismet keeps catching the spam, I find the whole thing quite amusing and the stats/analysis quite interesting. Obviously, once the load is so high that my bandwidth suffers or that I have to start manually dealing with the spam I’ll be less amused, but for now it’s ok.

although as a personal blog I have no idea what value finding it might bring [↩]

One thought on “And so it begins”

However, they’ve slowed down since I added reCaptcha to comment entry and removed the homepage entry option (not really useful and a haven for spammers to put their links). I’ve also set Akismet to capture anything with one link or more in it (I don’t think I’ve had a genuine comment with a link in it!).

Oh, and I added a strongly worded message to comment entry (along the lines of “it’s not worth it – it won’t be displayed”). Not that I think that made the slightest difference.

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In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be. - Hubert H. Humphrey.